No Birth Control, No Tobacco, No Condoms, No Makeup=No Customers

The Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy in Chantilly, VA, a “pro-life” establishment that limited what it sold for moral reasons, didn’t attract enough customers to stay in business. (Employee Pam Semler is pictured at the register.)

The drugstore was one of a handful across the country that have put the moral conviction of a pharmacist at the forefront of a business. And as a business model, that’s fine, I guess.

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John T. Bruchalski, president of Divine Mercy Care and the doctor who opened the pharmacy, then had to close it, said he wanted a place where pharmacists “could bring their conscience into the store, rather than hang it up at the door when they entered.”

Another pharmacy down the street offered much more convenience. Sometimes a person wants to pick up some mascara while buying some aspirin.

The other places across the country where the pharmacies are doing well are in more rural areas, where there isn’t the abundant competition that Divine Mercy Care faced, Bruchalski said.

But that’s the big problem with permitting pharmacies to dictate what they want to prescribe, Greenberger said. “What about places where women don’t have alternatives?” she asked.